The U.S. Democrat announced in December 2019 that he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
the legendary civil rights leader who helped organize the March on Washington and was later known as the “conscience of Congress,” died Friday at age 80.diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer“I have been in some kind of fight ― for freedom, equality, basic human rights ― for nearly my entire life,” Lewis said in aStephen F. Somerstein via Getty Images
At the head of the march from Selma to Montgomery on March 25, 1965, nuns, priests and civil rights leaders: The Rev. Arthur Matott , John Lewis , Andrew Young, Sister Mary Leoline and Theodore Gill.. Born on Feb. 21, 1940, to sharecroppers outside of Troy, Alabama, Lewis grew up attending segregated public schools. After watching the activism that sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and hearing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
As a college student attending Fisk University, Lewis helped organize peaceful sit-in protests at segregated lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee. At age 21, he volunteered to be a Freedom Rider — one of the activists who risked their lives challenging segregation throughout the South by sitting in seats reserved for white people.
Lewis helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and became its chairman during the peak of the civil rights movement from 1963 to 1966. Lewis organized student activism in the movement through SNCC and was eventually considered one of the “Big Six” leaders of the civil rights movement, alongside King.American politician and Civil Rights leader John Lewis speaks at a meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington DC, April 16, 1964.
At 23, Lewis was one of the organizers of and the youngest keynote speaker at the March on Washington in August 1963. He helped launch voter registration drives during the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964, yet another example of his Lewis often faced violent consequences for his civil rights leadership. He was repeatedly arrested and beaten by police and angry mobs for challenging Jim Crow segregation in the South and fighting for voting rights.
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